CW 1125: Opportunity Zones, Rental Demographics & Davos World Economic Forum Recap
7 Dec 2025 · 38 min
Podcast episode (recorded Feb 7, 2019) hosted by Jason Hartman with in-house economist Thomas. The host critiques 'Opportunity Zones' as overhyped, reiterates a buy-and-hold rental housing thesis, and emphasizes real estate as a durable, inflation-hedging asset. The episode includes excerpts and reactions to Davos/World Economic Forum commentary (Blackstone, Marriott, Ray Dalio) about sovereign debt, governance, and geopolitical risk. In a featured interview Thomas discusses disinflation/possible deflation driven by technology and globalization, the sharing economy's downward price pressures (Airbnb, Uber), debt dynamics relative to GDP growth and yield curves, demographic headwinds in Japan/Europe/China, and a cautiously positive near-term economic outlook (next 1–2 years). The episode closes with event promotion (Meet the Masters).
Chapters
Well, I like real estate just because I like the benefit of being able to have a mortgage pay off real estate over time so that when I retire, I have something. I like the fact that it's boring. I want to be able to be entertained and travel and do a lot of things in my retirement. And that boring investment of real estate allows me to do that.
Welcome to the Creating wealth show with Jason Hartman. You're about to learn a new slant on investing some exciting tech techniques and fresh new approaches to the world's most historically proven asset class that will enable you to create more wealth and freedom than you ever thought possible. Jason is a genuine, self made multimillionaire who's actually been there and done it. He's a successful investor, lender, developer and entrepreneur who's owned properties in 11 states, had hundreds of tenants, and been involved in thousands of real estate transactions. This program will help you follow in Jason's footsteps on the road to your Financial Independence Day. You really can do it. And now, here's your host, Jason Hartman with the complete solution for real estate investors.
Welcome and thank you for joining me. Episode 11251125 this is your host, Jason Hartman, coming to you today from my home in South Florida, the Treasure coast of Florida. Yes. Now, today, I know we promised we would do this last week, but we were stacked up with episodes we had to get out to you, our listeners, and many of you gave us some fantastic feedback on the episodes. So thank you for that. You know, it really makes us feel good to hear that we are making an impact. Several of you especially talked about the Opportunity Zones. The so inappropriately named Opportunity Zones. I think they should be called the Overrated Zones. Yes, the overrated zones. The OZs. The overrated zones. Yes. Opportunity Zones. Maybe that that name is a complete and total misnomer. Yes, it is. Well, time will tell. History will be the judge. But you know, I'm usually pretty right on about these things because I have learned after many hard lessons over the years that you shouldn't fall for the Shiny Object syndrome. Shiny Object syndrome can be very dangerous. Don't do it. Don't fall for it. Now, it doesn't mean every shiny object is bad. It just means you shouldn't instantaneously fall for one without thinking. You know, usually if you kind of just observe for a few minutes and wait on the sidelines. Now you don't want to miss an opportunity, but the opportunities to go for are the stayed and proven opportunities. Just buy some houses, okay? Buy some little houses. It's so simple, doesn't have to be complicated, right? Just buy some houses, rent them out to other people and you know, all the demographics. I said years ago that the next 10 years coming at the rental housing market are nothing short of phenomenal. And you know what, I'm extending that prediction because it just keeps pushing back, it just keeps looking good. You know, we had generation Y and now we got Generation Z coming up and we've got. Marriage has gone out of style, sadly from a culture war perspective. But from an income property investor perspective, it's a pretty good deal because married people buy houses more than they rent houses. And so there are so many good trends supporting the real estate investor. And it's not just about the price of rental housing, of course, you know, it's a multi dimensional asset class. And so you can adjust your strategy. Maybe it's a capital gains type of market somewhere in your path of your real estate portfolio building and holding. Holding, as they say. When they asked Warren Buffett, what's your favorite holding period? And he answered forever. That's my favorite holding period. I couldn't agree more. Just hang on to these places. You know what's interesting, the houses I bought, you know, 12, 14 years ago, and of course I bought many years before that, you know, decades ago. But those houses, I sold a lot of them and that wasn't a bad decision because they were in cyclical Southern California market. They would have made me a lot poorer keeping them because of the cash flow demands on those properties and the very poor rent to value ratios. But seemingly when you go on to Zillow and you look them up and you think, what was my old house worth? What were those three houses I sold that I used to own in Newport Coast California? What are they worth now? They're worth a lot more. And so at first I get kind of sad, but then I take out my yellow legal pack and I scratch a couple numbers down and I pull out my HP12C calculator. Yes, my vintage. I have three of them. Are those worth any like significant money yet? Because they are antiques, but they're the greatest calculator ever, the HP12C. Most of you have no idea what I'm talking about. I get it. It's this calculator that cost like a hundred dollars. And to learn how to use it, I took a three day class when I was 20 years old. And it's still my favorite calculator, you know. Yeah, I got it on my phone and all that stuff. But yeah, it's just not the same. You know, there is no equal sign on the HP12C calculator. And in fact, I remember seeing their magazine ads years ago when we had magazines. Oh yeah, we still have those. Okay. I remember seeing them and the headline would be the HP12C, the calculator with no equal. Because it didn't have an equal sign. Yes, it had other buttons, but no equal sign. Anyway, it's the greatest calculator ever. But I scratch out a couple things and I realize, you know, if I look at the money I would have lost, the opportunity cost I would have had by holding those properties that are now worth a lot more money, right? They didn't pencil my cheap properties, my cheap linear market rental properties because the cash flow is so much better, even though the appreciation isn't better, at least in the short runs when you're at the peaks in the market cycle. Now if you average them out, as you know, and I've talked about this many times over the years with you and I've shown the graph at our live conferences, one of which we have coming up. Look forward to seeing you there at Meet the Masters in March. When you do that, you see that on average because you don't have the give back during the down cycles in the cyclical market. Those linear markets perform exceptionally well. But you know, it's so tempting to see only the peaks and think, wow, if only Ida. But remember, you can't hear the dogs that don't bark. You can't hear the dogs that don't bark. And it's the old parable of the tortoise and the hare, right? And so that's the thing that really runs the game. And so Warren Buffett's favorite holding period is forever. You know what? So is mine. Another reason you don't need an overrated zone, opportunity zone, lack of opportunity zone. That's why don't fall for the shiny object syndrome. Okay, so we're going to talk, we're going to do our thing with our economist today. Our in house economist, Thomas is back and we recorded this about the World Economic Forum and just kind of gabbed a little bit about the economy in general. But before we do that, since it ties right in, I wanted to play this little video. Now you may have heard about this in the news. There was always a lot of doom and gloomers, right? And you know, maybe he's right. Okay, the hedge fund billionaire Seth Clareman issued a dire warning, right? He circulated this letter to the bigwigs at the World Economic Forum in Davos and this little video is about just that not all of it is audible. So I'll read you a couple things from it too. Here's the thing that I've always said about these doom and gloom predictions. You know, they, on the surface, they seem true because they're doing the math. And the math is legit, right? It's empirical, right? It's, it's not an anecdotal opinion. Math is viewed with a lot of credibility, and I agree that it has a lot of credibility. However, however, there's a lot more to life than math. And a lot of times what they don't really say, you know, is they don't say that, hey, there's a counterparty to all of this. And one of the interviews that I did, I think it was yesterday. I think we'll probably have that one coming up next week with one of the four founders of Blackstone. Yes, I interviewed him yesterday from his estate in Aspen, Colorado. He was super interesting, obviously super knowledgeable, you know, has tons of Wall street experience, worked at the Office of Management and Budget under Reagan for five years in the Reagan White House. Just an incredible interview, really. And so we'll, we'll have that coming up probably. We'll get that out to you next week. I think he talked about these problems too, and the concerns about the debt levels and so forth. And I, those are all very legitimate concerns, no question. However, one of the things I said to him, as I said, look, there's always a counterparty, right? And by the way, that's David Stockman, okay? He was in Congress for two terms and so on and so forth, okay? A director of Office of Management and Budget under Reagan. You know, there's always a counterparty to this. So the thing that happens during bad economic times is, is that the wealth doesn't disappear, like I've always said, right? The day before the Great recession started in 2008, if you looked around the world and you saw the number of houses that counted the amount of gold and oil and every asset on earth, right? And then the Great Recession occurred, right? And the next day, as things were falling apart, as Lehman Brothers was going under, etc, etc, right, as these, you know, near trillion dollar bailouts were going on, and Hank Paulson and you know, you remember all this, right, Bernanke, the whole, the whole shooting match of these guys, right? So as all this was going on and you looked around the world, after all that happened, guess what? All the same assets were still there. They just changed ownership and they changed the nominal Value, not the real value. Now, see, that's one of the reasons these fake financial assets, the difference between the Wall street economy and the Main street economy are so. It's so important to really grasp this because the fake assets are so much more volatile because they are just that they are fake financial assets are fake. All this Wall street innovation, it's just crap. It's only as valuable as anybody believes it is. Right? But the utility type assets that we like, AKA housing, right, that has universal need. Everybody in the world needs it. Those have real, legitimate intrinsic value. Okay, hey, I'm running long as usual.
Long.
Let me get to this video and then we'll get to the interview and we'll. So we're talking about Davos and the World Economic Forum. This happens every year. All the elite bigwigs go and hey, it's on my bucket list to go and attend Davos myself. So here is this short video. He warned about growing sovereign debt levels and rising geopolitical tensions. And the business leaders in Davos, here was their reaction letter.
What I can tell you is that the cohesion of societies in the developed world has definitely gone down. One of the contributors, I believe, is the Internet itself and the ability to mobilize small groups of people to basically undercut what societies typically would want to do. And we're becoming fractionated, and there's no head of state state who would tell you things are the same today.
Sounds like a little too much central planning for my taste, but okay, a democracy.
And so in that sense, Seth is correct. It is a world that is becoming less governable, certainly in the democracies, and that inhibits solutions to problems and. And governments need to provide solutions.
Has that slowed down any of your spending, any of your interest in making new acquisitions?
Not necessarily. Depends where. Where you invest.
It's the future. So that's what you got from Blackstone. Okay. And what's interesting about that is, you know, this whole idea that we need to be so governed. Right. You know that. Definitely. Spoken like an elitist. Right. There you go. Spoken like in the latest. Okay, here is Arnie Sorensen, and he's Marriott CEO or positive to you at this point? Globally?
I think both, if you will.
I mean, if you think about the.
Positive side for a second, people love to travel today more than ever. And young people particularly would put travel.
Very high on their list of things that they've got to do. When I was growing up, it used.
To be sort of a discretionary luxury, if you will.
Now, forget it. I'm going to take my vacation and I'm going to do that before I buy a car, maybe before I get an apartment, whatever. And that's happening all around the world. That's true. Of course. We talk about it in the sense.
Of people want experiences more than they want stuff. And I think there's. I think there's real truth to that.
It holds well for the hotel business. Now here's Ray Dalio Bridgewater. Okay. You know Ray Dalio, We've talked a lot about him on the show over the years.
In terms of creating a disruption, there's a certain time horizon, maybe a few months, nine months might be it. And so if you take corporate tax cuts, they make stocks worth more. Or if you have interest rates at such a low level that a return on investment of buying equities for those who own equities, I mean, the people who own their companies and they have buybacks, that supports stock prices. So the mechanics of that, even populism of the right capitalism and making profits is what motivates the stock market. It's not what motivates the whole economy. So you have to realize that you're buying an income stream. The implications of the political conflict for markets are very profound. So we're going to start to talk about that. For example, there's. Is a 70% tax rate going to happen?
I hope not.
We will behave with capital gains.
Yes.
Does that have an effect? So these factors, the combination. I think the three big factors are the combination of the wealth gap and the politics as it would come to it, where we are in the later cycle, and the inability of central banks to ease as much. That's the cauldron that will define 2019 and 2020, in my opinion.
All right, so there you go. You got some of the word from some of the elites at Davos. And interesting, the first one from Blackstone, that just. That just annoys me, you know? Oh, well, we shouldn't limit the power of government to govern because people are free and they communicate on the Internet, God forbid. Wow, that's almost scary talk. It really is. But hey, before we get to our discussion with Thomas more about the World Economic Forum, I just want to share with you one I thought pretty good quote from the State of the Union addressed last night. Okay. And I know many of you listening are Trump haters. I'm not saying I'm a Trump lover, but, you know, he makes some good points. Okay, so be a rational person and give him credit for when he makes a good point. How's this one, no issue better illustrates the divide between Americans, working America's working class and America's political class than illegal immigration. Wealthy politicians and donors push for open borders while living their lives behind walls and gates and guards. That, my friends, is the hypocrisy of the left right there. It's really the hypocrisy of both sides, but it's way more on the left than it is on the right. So for whatever it's worth, thought I'd throw that quote in. Okay, here we go with the interview with Thomas. Get your tickets for Meet the Masters if you haven't done so already. Jasonhartman.com masters and let's jump to the interview.
Hey listeners, I've got Thomas, our in house economist, back on the line with us. We told you we would talk to you a little bit about the World Economic Forum, that annual event with the world's elites in the financial industry. And it just goes to show you that the financial industry is the world industry. So there's a lot to it. Anyway, Thomas, welcome back. How are you?
I'm doing well, how are you?
Fine, thank you. So we talked about the happiness quotient and whether or not that's related to GDP and the productivity of a population in a country. A little bit about inflation versus deflation. This is, you know, a huge issue obviously for how one might invest and so forth. It sounds like you think, and this is probably contrary to what I think, that there, there's going to be a little bit of deflation coming up. And you don't think it's that bad. Tell us more.
If inflation was measured the way it was back in the 70s, then I don't think there's any way we'd see deflation. But with the way it is measured now and the trend of disinflation since the 1970s, if that trend continues, then deflation could be the case. In 2020, the average inflation rate has gone from around 6% in the 70s to 5% in the 80s and then 3% and 2.5%. And it looks like this decade it might be below, below 2%.
So the target, the Fed's target is to have inflation around 2%. And they're playing to the Phillips curve, which is the inflation versus employment theory. And you know, I think there's some legitimacy to that. I mean, what would be the cause of that? Technology is a deflationary force. Monetary policy is an inflationary force because it's so irresponsible, largely. What would be the cause of deflation? Or, you know, just a sort of at par environment where there's just no inflation or deflation, just not much is happening at all. Sort of a stag. Well, I don't want to say stagnation, because it doesn't mean the economy is necessarily stagnant, but just nothing much is happening on the inflation scale. I guess I'll say.
Yeah, I think the technology is certainly part of it. The globalization of the supply chain, it's put downward pressure on prices for a while now. If that keeps going, you know, it's hard to see real strong inflation and then the way we account for the substitution of goods. So.
Say Uber or Airbnb, they put downward pressure on prices, and it's not like they're. They're not decreasing the demand for goods. They're just putting downward pressure on the supply. So in essence, they're pushing up demand, which boosts economic growth, but they're also putting pressure on the price point. And I think if that continues, then we could see what we saw in the 1870s to the 1900s where we saw bouts with deflation, but overall economic growth was pretty strong.
Mm. How deflationary is technology? I mean, it's pretty deflationary, isn't it?
Well, I think you already know the answer to this.
Yeah, I do. I'm asking for the benefit of the.
Listeners, a lot of the questions you ask. I know you do. Like Airbnb. Does it put downward pressure on prices? And when I looked at it, it looks to me like at least puts a couple percentage points downward pressure on hotel revenue.
Yeah. You know, that's really interesting. I'm glad you brought up Airbnb. Or let's make it even more broad. Let's just talk about the sharing economy. So the sharing economy is a technology at heart because it really is enabled by technology. Without the kind of technology we have nowadays, there's no way you could coordinate all this unused capacity in our economy. And I was listening to an audiobook yesterday or maybe a news story, and it talked about this company that is now coordinating empty semi truck space for shipping cargo. Right. And how 40% of the truck trips the truck is empty. And that's a tremendous waste, of course. Right. And if you could fill all of that space and use all of that unused capacity, it would obviously be dramatically more efficient. And so, you know, this is. We'll call it the Uber and Lyft of semi trucks. Right. And whether it be the bicycles, the Airbnb concept, the ride sharing, whatever sharing economy concept it is, it's putting a lot of unused assets to work. And once those assets are all used, the price discovery has occurred. Right. And then after that usage happens, you can start to see whether or not there will ultimately be inflation afterwards. Because initially it's downward pressure. Like certainly taxi cabs have had to compete with Lyft and Uber and they've become cheaper or they've just gone away. Right. And so it's a deflationary thing. But once you kind of work that through the system system and all the capacity is filled again, then I don't know, maybe the monetary pressures come back into play. Right. And cause inflation.
Yeah, that's an interesting thought. I hadn't thought of it that way. It makes sense that after the bottom point of prices are discovered, that there's nowhere to go but up.
So, Thomas, let me couch that in the global labor market perspective. Okay, I have this weird theory. I could be totally off here, but I've said it before, so it's not the way first time I've said it on the show that Nixon, I mean, it's just too much of a coincidence that in the early 70s, Nixon took us off the gold standard, right. He made the final disconnect in 1971. You know, it was right around the time that he. He took that historic trip to China and opened up China. Was he this brilliant president possibly, that saw that, you know, because the dollar was no longer tethered to gold at all, that of course the politicians could buy votes and spend whatever they want and inflation was coming and it certainly did long after he was gone from office. But it certainly came. And there was the OPEC crisis and the gas lines and all of that stuff. You know, he opened up China. So we exploited this. And you know, I don't mean that in a negative way. We sent a lot of business there, right. And that was deflationary by manufacturing in China, the workshop of the world. Right. But where do you go after that? It's like almost every vestige of cheap labor around the planet has already been now used. That capacity is now utilized, Right? Yeah. Certainly Africa's got resources and so forth, but Africa is kind of a mess, right? There's too many tribes and governments and very fragmented. So, you know, maybe that kind of price discovery is actually happening now, you know, just the same way as it might with the sharing economy. What do you think? I know these are big weird macro thoughts, but I stay up late night thinking about this stuff.
Oh, I like it. You know, the shift to a fiat currency. It's Coincided with a ballooning in debt. And with the exception of the 1980s, well, debt grew during the 1980s, but you know, we've seen corporate debt, government debt, student debt explode over the past few years. Decades. And part of that is connected with the ability to issue fiat currency. It's not a problem when the GDP growth plus the inflation rate is greater than what the yield curve is, say on the ten year note.
Okay, explain that to us a little bit more. Unpack that one. I don't know if people understand it. I don't even know if I understand it. I mean, I know GDP and population, those need to sink a bit, otherwise you'll have inflation or deflation as a malady. How does the yield curve come into play?
The idea is that as long as you're growing fast enough to pay off any debt issuance cost. So the issuance cost plus the coupon rate, as long as you can pay that off, you're fine. And that's exactly what governments have done. So with the exception of a few years in the 80s, GDP growth and inflation rate that generates the tax revenue to pay off the bonds. And as long as that's growing, say at 2% plus 2%, the GDP growth plus an inflation rate of 4%. As long as that's higher than say the 10 year note, which I checked this morning, it was floating at about 2.73%. As long as it's growing faster, they're okay. You know, any debt coming due can just be reissued. And as long as the coupon on that is less than GDP growth plus inflation rate, there's no pressure.
What you're talking about there is treasury bills, right? Government debt.
In essence, you're talking about treasury bills. The same thing applies to say corporate debt. Just replace GDP growth with total revenue growth, right?
So it applies in the macro, the micro and even the personal sense almost maybe with household debt even, I don't know, you could make that as a bit of a stretch. But they can't do the same things. The public companies and the governments can, of course. But yeah.
Interesting in connection to technology though. If we're reaching a point to where the lowest possible price point is reached on a macro scale, then you know that that means there's price pressure coming up, which. That's a problem, you know.
Well, it's an opportunity if you invest for inflation like our listeners do. You mean it's a problem meaning inflation is coming, Right. In that case, yeah.
You looked at the glass half full? I looked at the glass half empty, yeah.
Well, listen, like I say, most people really get hurt by inflation, but our clients benefit from it. And not in the normal way that most people say, hey, real estate's a good hedge against inflation. Our clients leverage that dramatically. And you know, that has like an order of magnitude better than most real estate investors for our clients because we have a few little secrets that help them do that. So, you know, good stuff. You know, the question I always ask people is compared to what? Compared to What? So the U.S. has all these problems. We have, you know, $20 trillion in debt or whatever. We have these big deficits, we have this, that and the other thing, we have divisiveness, etc. But compared to what? I mean, look, Europe is on the brink of some serious problems. Four countries in Europe are essentially insolvent. Four decent sized countries, the pigs I'm talking about, China is really got a tough road ahead. The World Economic Forum, they talked about both of these things. Give us an update on those.
Oh yeah, if I were a betting man, and I guess I kind of am, I'd say that the ecb, the European Central bank, will have lower interest rates by the end of this year than they will higher interest rates. It's just I can't see with the weakness there that the ECB would even consider raising rates. They never raised rates like the Federal Reserve did. They put them behind the curve and now what do they do? Their rates are already pretty much zero. We'll probably see real discussion about negative rate on a currency held in banks. Not the actual currency rate, but balances held in banks. Kind of like what the bank of Japan did.
Yeah, so. So that was Japan's lost two decades. Not lost decade, but lost two decades. And the thing though that is interesting is Harry Dent was, you know, one of the first big names to argue this idea is that Japan's real problem, of course they have all these problems, right? But their real core big problem is that they have a demographic problem. And so does China. China. And so does Western Europe. I mean, if you don't have young people working, paying into the system, you got a big problem. I mean, your country becomes insolvent in short order. Russia's got the same problem too. I mean, Pat Buchanan years ago wrote that book Death of the west and I interviewed him on the show and boy, that was a prescient book. I mean, I think he wrote it in the mid-90s or something. Something. And he's right, the west is just not reproducing. I mean, the fertility rates are dismal Nobody has kids anymore. I mean, it's. It's really a. It's kind of a shocking thing. It's not really talked about very much either.
There was an article out this morning in the Wall Street Journal. I think I'd have to double check, but the idea was that there's a trade off between women entering the labor force and having children. You choose one or the other. I don't think some will say they can. You know, families can have both.
Yeah, contrary to popular belief of the Superwoman syndrome. You know what? Raising kids is a lot of work, and having a career is a lot of work, too. It's pretty much a trade off. Right. You can try and do both, but one is going to suffer at the expense of the other. There's just no question about it. You know, people only have 24 hours in a day. That's equal opportunity for everybody. And you can only do so much with it. Right. You know, I mean, I grew up with a working mom. I didn't see her too much. I was a latchkey kid and hey, look at how I turned out. No one would recommend that.
So you're the exception rather than the rule.
No, I. I might be the rule. You know, I'm poking a little fun at myself here, but it's definitely true. But, you know, and Mark Stein, the political commentator, talks about this in his books. You know, he says you can't have a country without a population. In a few decades, Japan and Russia and Western Europe will essentially be gone. I mean, there's no people there. How can you have a country without people? And he makes a really good argument for that. But I guess the environmentalists will be happy because, you know, according to them, people are not a resource. They are the scourge of the earth. I view it the other way. I like people. I think they are a resource. I think they solve problems. Which, speaking of the environment, the elitist hypocrites in Davos, Switzerland this year, they topped the record for the most private jets there as they went to talk about how everybody should have a lower carbon footprint. Absolutely ridiculous. But I think Bill Gates, I just read an article, he invested in a company that can make gasoline from carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Somehow that's a stretch, but. But that's pretty amazing. And that's my point, though, Thomas. People do solve these problems. Yes, they mess up the world. I completely agree. People litter, they consume, they pollute, but they also come up with great ideas. And I just kind of have faith that people will, you know, if we have more people here, we're gonna have more people to come up with great ideas. I, I just view people as a resource. But, you know, everybody can argue that until the cows come home, as they say. Right. Okay.
So just once, just once I'd like to see you be pessimistic.
Yeah. Oh, oh, really? You don't think I'm a pessimist? Sometimes I'm really pessimistic about something. So, you know. But I'm, I'm kind of weird. I'm optimistic and pessimistic. Yeah. Well, I gotta ask you, what are you optimistic or pessimistic about? The economy next five years? What's it look like?
Oh, I think the next two years look good. Rates are still relatively low. The equity markets are up around 14% since the December downturn. Doesn't surprise me that corporate earnings came in somewhat low week for the fourth quarter of 2018. But you know, most of that was priced into the market. That's why markets collapsed in December. They expected that. And there's still a good amount of growth left for the economy, you know.
Sure, yeah. So after two years, are you saying it depends on the presidential election or we just don't know, or you think in 2020 things change a lot?
I'd have a hard time seeing a recession during a presidential election year. I don't think we'll see one in 2019. So that pushes it at least out to 2021.
We shall see how it all shakes out. We shall see. Okay, Anything else you want to share with our listeners as we wrap it up?
Yeah, we're in the midst of the fourth Industrial revolution and times are good.
Tell us about that. Is that because of that? Because of the information revolution? I mean, we've been going through that one for a while, but what do you mean?
This is kind of a debate whether we're in the fourth or if we're still in the third. The first one was the 1760-1840 railroads, the steam engine, you know, that boom period. And then the 1870s, the 1910 mass production and electricity and assembly lines. And then in the 60s, semiconductors, mainframe computers, personal computing, the Internet came along and then now, assuming we can distinguish between what we saw in the early 2000s and what we're seeing now, maybe call it the digital revolution. Artificial intelligence is something worth considering. Machine learning, Internet of things, the service economy. The depth is just amazing. In Europe, it took 120 years for the swindle. Is that what you call it? The swindle to make its way. The spindle. Sorry, the spindle.
The spindle.
Is this for clothing? Textiles? Is that what you're talking about?
Yeah, textiles. It took 120 years for the spindle to make it across Europe. And you know, the Internet took 10 years to cross the world.
Right? Yeah, it's pretty amazing. It really is an amazing time to be alive. Forgive me for sounding optimistic, but. But hey, listen, if you want me to get pessimistic, let's talk about the culture war. I am really pessimistic about culture. I think there's a lot of tough things happening in the culture. But as far as technology and the right strategy for dealing with the economy, I'm not saying the economy. Economy is all great or anything. I'm just saying you can adapt the strategy. And that's why I love income property because it's very adaptable to changes in the economy, whether it be a cash flow strategy, a capital appreciation strategy, a blend of the two, whatever. You know, that varies. But yeah, we'll. We'll talk about that another time. But yeah, very interesting. And there is, it's just amazing the kinds of things we'll see. I was studying a little bit more about this amazing material, graphene that we're all starting to hear about that is going to revolutionize so many things and solve so many of the world's problems. It's absolutely mind boggling. So more about that. In fact, maybe I'll share the audio from a video I watched recently on that. It's quite fascinating. Thomas, thanks for joining us today and until next time. Time. Happy investing.
Good talking to you.
Join us March 23rd and 24th for the 2019 Meet the Masters of Income Property. Let's break this down and look at some of the strengths of income property as an asset class. I found that this event is really.
Helpful because I'm totally a newbie to.
Real estate investment and so I picked up so much information. One of the great things about it is that it's so fragmented. It. Right. Embrace the fragmentation.
I've actually been learning a lot about tax benefits to real estate and I've been investing actually well over 10 years now and I learned a lot of new things today. The other advantage of this weekend is networking, meeting new property managers, meeting new area specialists and seeing the product they have to offer that job changes year by year. Register now@jason hartman.com masters.
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